Friday, December 30, 2011

The Case for Ron Paul - An Open Letter to the American Patriot

When I initially sat down to write this letter, I tried to focus
on the issues. I took each issue one by one, and passionately described how Ron
Paul has it right. I talked about how as an Army ROTC Cadet, I feel his foreign
policy is the strongest and safest path for America, how’s he’s anything but
anti-military and anything but isolationist. Then I talked about the
constitution, about free minds and free markets, and the dangers of activist monetary
policy and the Federal Reserve. I tried to defend him against the absurd
slander about racism, and did my best to shield him from all the other mud
being flung his way. I promoted civil liberties, equality under the law, and
individual rights.

But when I was finished, I realized what I had written was merely an eloquent
endorsement of Ron Paul’s platform. It was well written and informative, and if
you already liked Ron Paul it would probably have fired you up. But if you care
enough about politics to still be reading this, chances are you’ve already
developed your opinions on all those issues, and those opinions probably won’t
change because some college kid convinced you otherwise. So I scrapped it.
Instead of trying to tell you what to believe, I’d like to try to place what
you know already in context. I’d like to provide perspective, rather than just
opinion. To do that we need to begin with a miniature history lesson.

“Extremism in the defense of
liberty is no vice...moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” –
Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater was another freedom-loving Republican with a
propensity for speaking his mind. His beliefs were certainly not analogous to
Paul’s, especially on foreign policy, but his platform was socially and economically
very similar. More importantly, he saw the direction that big government was
taking the country, and dedicated his life to trying to change that direction.
In 1964 he ran for president against incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson, the year
after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. After winning a bitterly contested
primary (in which a young Newt Gingrich endorsed his competitor) he was
attacked by Johnson for being radical and dangerous. In one famous television
ad (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k
), the Johnson campaign suggested that Goldwater’s policies would lead to a
nuclear bomb detonating in the United States. It was devastatingly effective, and
sympathy for JFK’s recent assassination also helped Johnson’s campaign. Despite
an impassioned endorsement of Goldwater by a young Ronald Reagan (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY),
Johnson won in a landslide.

The short term result was the disastrous Great Society, more
burdensome and unsustainable entitlements, the creation of new and unnecessary executive
departments, a drastic expansion of the bureaucracy, the Vietnam War,
finalizing the break from the Gold Standard and allowing for perpetual
manipulation of the money supply.

But more importantly, the 1964 election sent both parties
the message that extremism in the defense of liberty was a politically unwise
experiment, and that moderation in the pursuit of justice was much safer.
Telling the “mainstream” what it wanted to hear could help them get elected
much more easily than ideals or principles could, because most Americans didn’t
think about those principles in practice very much. Sticking to principle
required explaining how your principles applied to the issues; that could get
confusing and wasn’t a very catchy campaign slogan. Plus, standing your ground
meant that some people might disagree, and without the flexibility to move your
position, you’d have no chance to get their vote. So for decades, political
parties have focused more on assembling a winning “coalition” than on defending
cohesive ideologies. The idea is that if they can give targeted groups of
people whatever they want, and can add up enough of those groups to create a
majority, they will win the election, which is all that matters to them. The
larger, wealthier and more powerful the interest group, the better, because the
more that group will help them get reelected.

It’s not that Democrats and Republicans don’t have
ideological differences, because they usually do. It’s just that when those
beliefs are pitted against what is politically convenient for the furthering of
their career, both sides generally choose the latter. When you put so many congressmen
with such different beliefs in a room together and ask them to work things out,
oftentimes the only things they can agree on are the things which are in their
mutual best interests: namely, getting reelected. And they’ve both discovered
that the best way to get reelected is to increase their own power, so that they
may sell favors to powerful interests in exchange for support. They’ve
discovered that the best way to get reelected is to change their positions to
whatever’s popular at the time, rather than saying what they believe is best
for the country. They’ve discovered that the best way to get reelected is to
pander to that mainstream by refusing say anything controversial that might
alienate some people, by refusing to stand by what they believe in and instead
standing where they believe the electorate will view them most favorably.

The result is that we voters are rarely given a choice
between two competing ideologies and asked to pass judgment on which we prefer.
Rather, we are given a choice between two ever-evolving parties that
continually aim to tell their traditional supporters what they want to hear,
and to give their powerful interests what they want. Both are obsessed with
poll numbers, perpetually jostling for the “mainstream” middle ground that will
grant them enough independents to assemble a majority. No politician dares to
say anything that might engender opposition, and none dare to go against what the
most powerful interests want.

Unfortunately for us, not everybody can have what they want.
We’ve tried that for decades, and look where it’s gotten us? We’ve tried
passing “compromises” that feed the most powerful interests on both sides; we’ve
AARP massive, ever-growing entitlement programs, the military-industrial
complex an ever-growing defense budget, the taxpayers tax cuts, the farm
industry subsidies, the auto industry’s a bailout, big companies a favorable
regulatory climate, and subprime applicants a cheap loan. Before we know it,
we’re 15 trillion dollars in debt. Nobody on either side asks whether these are
a good idea, unless it’s politically wise to do so in a grandiose campaign ad.
If nobody sees them do the good, they reckon it’s not worth doing; if nobody
sees them do the bad, they figure they will be able to get away with it.

If you’re still reading this, chances are I’m preaching to
the choir. It’s a pretty big choir! Most people are fed up with this crap, and
have been for several years. They see where this “mainstream” politics has
taken us, and they want a change from that status quo. They were promised that
change four years ago, and they didn’t get it. They are now even more
disillusioned now than they were in 2008, but it doesn’t seem to be making any
difference. Despite congressional approval ratings consistently below 15% and
one of the greatest changeovers in American electoral history, about 86% of
congressional incumbents retained their seat in 2010. The most depressing part
about this selfishness, greed and dishonesty is that it works. The “public
servants” who serve only themselves have a stranglehold on power that seems
unbreakable, eternally reminding us of the system’s inherent brokenness. Even
politicians who start out with good intentions seem corrupted by power and the
desire to keep it, and soon advocate whatever will help them at the polls,
whatever will give them popular talking points. All across the country,
politicians tell voters whatever they want to hear, and get rewarded for it.

Except, that is, for one. One man has held out. Out of the
536 people who make up Congress and the Presidency, and the thousands who have
held those offices for the past four decades, exactly one has consistently resisted
this temptation. The Congressman from Texas’ 14th district does not
change his stances for political convenience. He never has. He has preached the
same message of freedom and constitutionally limited government for his entire
35-year career. He has voted no for every single tax hike. He has voted no for
every single pork-barrel spending project. He has voted no for every single proposal
that is not within the Federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers,
no matter how good that proposal would make him look to mainstream voters. Many
times, he has been the only member of either house to do so.

Sometimes, he’s lost winnable elections because of it. But
mostly, he’s been ostracized for it. He’s been relegated to the fringe by
people who share his core beliefs, just because it was politically dangerous to
present those beliefs in such an uncompromising manner. Both parties have
distanced themselves from him because they’re afraid of what he’s going to say
next. This fear is magnified because they KNOW what he’s going to say next. They
know he will say the same thing tomorrow that he said yesterday, and the day before
that, and the year before that, and the election cycle before that, and the
decade before that. They’re afraid that each time he repeats the same set of
beliefs will provide yet another testament to his outright refusal to toe the
party line. They’re afraid that each time he opens his mouth, he might be able
to convey the conviction that drives him, to portray the principles that guide
his every vote and every speech. And mostly, they’re afraid that this will illuminate
a distinction between what drives him and what drives them. It is the
distinction between one who seeks the preservation of one’s own power, and one
who seeks the betterment of the country. It is the distinction between
self-service and public service. Politicians on both sides, and the powerful interest
groups who depend on their assistance, are afraid of what might happen to their
power if enough Americans get that message.

Consequentially, he’s been ignored every time he takes the
floor. He’s been given less time at the debates than his competitors. He’s
ridiculed as cooky, loony, out-of-touch, unrealistic and impractical, nicknamed
“Crazy Uncle Ron” and “Dr. No”. He’s been shunned from the mainstream media and
glossed over in reporting on the polls, unmentionable unless followed by the
phrase “but there’s no way he could win”. He’s been the butt of every political
talk show joke in the books, had his name defiled, been called a racist and a
sexist and an Anti-Semite and a homophobe and a lunatic and everything else. In
the dirty game of politics he’s had more mud flung at him than just about
anybody, yet he trudges on unfazed. Alone and ostracized and insulted and
ridiculed, he has fought against the tide for 35 years, guided only by what he
believes in his core to be right.

What he believes to be right is freedom, and he has
dedicated his entire life to advancing it. In December of 2007, he tried to
advance that message by using a historical reference to another group of people
who fought for freedom by creating the world’s first ever Tea Party Moneybomb.
Many political scholars claim the Tea Party movement, designed to “take back
our country” from the self-serving tyrants who dominate it, developed from the
surprising success of that event.

And then, a curious thing happened. The theories that his
opponents had ridiculed for so long turned into actual events. The predictions
he made in 2002, 2006 and 2007 about the collapse of the housing and lending
industries came to pass. The economy crashed, and the government used it as
justification to increase spending and increase credit and bailout big business
and increase its own power: just as this one man had predicted. The war’s
overseas escalated and we lost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in longer-than-expected
engagements: just as this one man had predicted. And as the Tea Party movement
grew, suddenly the message of a constitutionally limited government didn’t seem
so radical. Suddenly other politicians, in their eternal quest for electoral
support, began saying the same things that this man had been saying for
decades. Instead of changing his beliefs to fit the mainstream, this man waited
for the mainstream to come around to his beliefs. At 76, in his last ever
political go-round, it finally happened.

That man is Ron Paul, and he is not a perfect candidate. But
there is no perfect candidate in this race, and Ron Paul just so happens to be
right most of the time. His ideology provides a cohesive, conservative approach
to politics that I truly believe is what’s best for this country on nearly all
fronts, but the contents of that ideology are almost secondary. What’s more
important, what makes him different than nearly everyone else, is that he HAS
an ideology! He actually MEANS what he says, and he WILL follow through with
it. We know this because he’s been saying it and doing it for the past three
and a half decades. We know it because people have gone through hell and high
water trying to get him to say otherwise, or at least to just shut up, and each
time he simply refuses to do so.

There is no other candidate in recent memory, certainly not
in this election, who comes with that guarantee. In four years when 2012’s
victor is up for reelection, we don’t know what the economy will be like. We
don’t know what the mood of the country will be, or what rhetoric will be received
most favorably by the middle ground. We can’t know what will be convenient for other
politicians to do, and for that reason we can’t know what they will do. But we
can be absolutely certain of what Ron Paul will do, or at least of what he will
try to do. Ron Paul will cut a trillion dollars year one. He will decrease the
debt, decrease regulation, end crony capitalism, level the playing field and
drain the bureaucratic swamp. He will bring the troops home, preserve civil
liberties and protect our freedoms from both foreign governments and our own.
He will heed the constitution instead of trampling on it, and transform the
suddenly mainstream desire to shrink the power of government into actuality.

These are important issues, but there are important issues
in every election. Petty squabbles over trivial distractions like the payroll
tax or the debt ceiling do not make this year unique. What makes this year
unique is that this year, an honest patriot is in the running. The t-shirts his
supporters wear don’t say “join the campaign!” because it’s not a campaign;
they say “join the Revolution!” Campaigns are movements organized for the
primary purpose of winning the election. Ron Paul would like to win the
election and he certainly can, but that is not his primary purpose. His primary
purpose is to change the way we view politics, to orchestrate a fundamental
shift from the maintenance of the establishment to the preservation of liberty.
That is a truly revolutionary change, and it’s the same revolution that the
protestors at the Boston Tea Party were waging.

If you disagree with some the details of Paul’s policy
stances, that’s more than okay. So do I! However, as a former Republican who’s
now a libertarian, I do feel you’ll be surprised by how much sense he makes if
you give him a chance. There are 11 months left in this campaign, and it’s
gonna be a long haul; there’s plenty of time left for him to work you over like
he did me! And even if you reject certain elements of his platform outright,
recognize that his winning the election would not automatically make the whole
country his libertarian playground. The beauty of the constitution he holds so
dear is that it has a system of checks and balances, and no one man can get his
way on everything. Besides, there is no such thing as a libertarian tyrant,
because once in power libertarians only want to leave you alone!

2012 is a chance to make a statement that lasts long beyond
the next four years. A Ron Paul nomination would produce a realigning election
that shocked the political status quo and significantly furthered the debate on
the proper size of government. The only thing preventing Ron Paul from winning that
election is the political talking heads who say he can’t win; the beauty of
democracy is that we can decide that for ourselves! Polls show that Paul
actually has the best chance against Obama in a head to head, because he is
much more likely to convince foreign policy doves, minorities, young people,
and disillusioned independents to vote Republican than any other candidate. And
while he might anger some traditional Republicans, he wouldn’t anger them
enough to vote for Obama!

But even if he doesn’t win, a Paul ticket would help others
follow in his footsteps. The more the country flounders over big government
policies, the more support is drawn to the ideas of limited government, which
is ultimately more important to the historical direction of our country than
the economy over the next 4 years. A Paul ticket would attract legions of young
people into the Republican party and perhaps even erase the Democratic party’s
advantage in that demographic, securing an idealistic core of Republican
supporters for decades to come. It would give the party an ideological
direction for the future, whereas defeat by any other Republican candidate would
simply throw the party back into the confusion and disarray of 2008. And it
would pave the way for similarly dedicated freedom fighters to take up the
fight, just as Reagan followed Goldwater. In short, voting for Ron Paul sends
the message that the principled defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation
in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. There is no more patriotic a vote than
that.